Have been working into this piece with oil bars recently and continuing to sew into selected areas of the canvas. The oil bars are great because they are so chunky you can’t be too precious about the mark making which I really like. So you get the richness of oil paint together with the drawing aspect which I also like. I sometimes don’t like to share work as it goes along because sometimes it makes me stop and I have to guard the gold. But this time I seem to be ok and am just in the midst and am keeping going!

Here is a little oil oldie from 1986 of a stony stream near Helton Cumbria where my parents used to live. The original is with my friend Marion Williams. I remember sitting next to the stream painting this plein air. I always love the crystal clear water of streams in the Lake-District and that has not gone away! Nature is the master healer. This little square piece is in oil on canvas.

Here is my current embroidery based on some Norfolk grasses seen on a holiday in that fair county here in the UK last September. I am sewing on dyed stretched canvas then I will rabbit skin size chosen areas and oil paint on that. I am really enjoying developing this technique and find the sewing meditative, slow and satisfying. I will keep sharing sections as they progress. This is a tall narrow piece and I think will take me a very long time but that doesn’t worry me at-all. I intended this to be a project that would take up the winter months. Keep watching for progress.

Well, I am leaving this piece now. You never really know when things are ‘done’ they just stop at an interesting point. I have another idea for a piece to do over the winter months and hope to push the boundaries of experimenting with embroidery and oil still further with the next one. Need to address stretching the canvas again and getting ready to sew. I like to do this in daylight for choosing the oil colour as well as the threads. If I work in the evening with artificial light, it can affect so much in subtle ways. 

I have been making more marks on this piece and am sharing a different part of it from last time. Am at a very delicate stage and need to leave it alone soon, I think! I always have this dilemma as to when to stop. The answer will come to me I just have to wait!

Here is a self -portrait from 1978 in oil pastel. It was in my final show at Leeds. I only have this, a few more drawings and a little oil I shared in the previous post. The setting is the garden at my parents’ house in Helton. Yes, it is very influenced by Munch who I studied for my final dissertation. We are inspired and influenced by so many artists throughout our lives, but ultimately have to find our own artistic voice and not slavishly copy. We work through the influences that resonate and articulate our own artistic voice whatever that may be. That is not wrong, as Francis Bacon iterated ‘To create something …is a sort of echo from one artist to another.’

I understand now that I have some of the jigsaw pieces in place. Leeds University in 1976 was suddenly pervaded with an interest in the Situationists. It was radical and Marxist. I am not a Marxist, but I do know that such positions would advocate revolutionary approaches to status quo and radical thinking in the arts. This mindset came into the Fine Art department in Leeds. All this is great and generated much heated debate asking fundamental questions about what art is, and even who we are and do we even need our names. So, the old pedagogies and ways of approaching disciplines like painting were about to be turned upside down. Studio based contemplative retreat into creative response was challenged by the punk rock bands that took over Leeds University art department studios. Where could the more introspective and quiet painters retreat to? With their peace disturbed in this radical fashion the only choice would be to fight back in a different way, join in or retreat to a quieter place to pursue their own creative response. 

 Gender issues were also brought to the fore in seminars when looking at painting in a new and challenging way, though the formal aspects of studying painting were sometimes side-lined in pursuit of this politicised agenda. The idea of artist as hero like Jackson Pollock and the abstract expressionists was also being subverted. This needed to happen, and was timely, however the baby was in danger of being thrown out with the bath water. The art historian is usually someone who does not paint or create him or herself but can have a huge influence on the creativity of young artists. I am a great believer in art being its own language. Why write about it when the art itself is a language in itself? This was all happening very fast and not in a gentle way. Gentle is not the idea behind revolution. Whoever heard of a gentle revolution? The trouble is that the creative impulse comes from deep inside each individual and should be carefully and responsibly guided and nurtured. Artists have always come together to support each other, and this is one of the wonderful things behind the creative impulse. To share and challenge ideas, but to also be sensitive to the way each person really wants to express themselves. 

The Leeds creative explosion caused a lot of collateral damage. You could say that it needed to happen and that new movements and ideas for change are generated this way. However, young people are so impressionable and sometimes do not know when they are being used as conduits for others’ ideas or ego to realise itself through their talent. There must be room for many ways of working. Collaboratively and dynamically in mixed studio settings, or quietly and reflectively in a single artist’s studio. Francis Bacon worked this way, and though untrained, became one of our most Avant Garde artists of his generation. I have seen this first hand throughout my career as an art teacher. One way of working cannot be allowed to overshadow another and sensitivity in this regard is a duty of care on the part of the tutors and visiting practitioners. You could say that these are adults as all are over 18 years old, but these are young adults away from home for the first time. They need to be guided and given the space to create with care. It is not enough to drop the grenades of strong ideas like the Situationists had and step back and watch what happens. These are human beings not lab rats. Lots of money was made by the young artists who formed bands in the studios at Leeds University and they used their skills in graphic design to market their music. You could say it was a success in that way, so all is well. But is that all we need to say? Were they trying to please, to somehow give what was being asked of them. They themselves would have to answer this.  A house style developed that was ahead of its time and still looks fresh: heightened and neon colour became a trademark. The handmade DIY look also became de rigeur in some responses to album design. Formal painterly concerns were put to one side it could be said in favour of a fresh and dynamic unfettered- by- the-past response. The list could go on. 

 Meanwhile some of the painters retreated into their band of monks reinforcing a more measured and controlled response that came down from Euan Uglow and other successful artists at the time. No-one imparted to us the likelihood of making a living as an artist was remote. There was no realistic and grounded advice being given for life beyond the art course. Measured drawing and painting meant that work could often look similar and static. They were protected in their little conclave of likeminded people and not challenged or challenging like the punk rockers. To be outside all of this meant you were isolated and alone needing to find a solitary artistic direction or wait to do so in the real world. The punks should have kept painting throughout, and it’s great to know that some came back to it in exciting new ways that keep the punk sense of humour and irony and address disturbing social issues as demonstrated at Becoming the Ouroboros show at Leeds University recently. Painting still has a strong place and identity of its own in contemporary artistic response. Watch this space. 

 We need to go further now and offer solutions through creativity. Like the Harvey Myra Hindley portrait made up of the handprints of dead child victims, it’s not enough to highlight these things without trying to help in some real way. I know the artist is mirroring the sense of disgust as Marcus Harvey did in his painting, and he was not simply celebrating a heinous crime, but we need to go further. We need to try to help through what we make and do. Art becomes social. It always was and is, but the formal issues should never be debunked as not mattering. They always do. You just need to try making a drawing or painting yourself to know. Save the baby of art history and painting whilst building something new.                                 Still Life with Glasses and Jug 1978 Leeds oil

Here is the drawing that I made on the spot that is informing my current embroidery/oil. Still have more to do and love how the work fixes itself in my mind on a daily basis. The slow nature of the sewing helps this and is meditative as it continuously brings you into the present. It is complex so there is not room in your mind for other stuff!

Here is a detail of a piece I am working on at the moment from a sketch made at the lake earlier this year. I will post the sketch in the next post. It is approaching being done but not quite there yet. This is a delicate stage and am feeling my way towards it. I am leaving things sooner than I used to so as to not over-egg the pudding. I need to get outside again soon I think to do more drawing. I do have an idea for a piece to do over the winter months but will let it mergle with me for a bit as is my wont!

Here is a little video of me sewing on my current piece based on Birks Mere lake here in the UK. It was suggested to me to take little videos of me working on pieces like this as a way of sharing my practice. I find that my sewing pieces don’t mind me doing this a bit! Oil painting is a bit different- it seems I have to guard the gold there until it is ready to be seen. The embroidery is very much about process though that brings us into the moment and video is in the moment so it kind of fits!

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